Adventures in Aerial Counterinsurgency

This is a subject I’ve written about several times before, but it continues to be mind-boggling that even our new Petreausified, hip-to-COIN version of MNF-Iraq keeps relying so heavily on air power as a combat tactic. This simply won’t work. But it’s also a key signal that “surge” or no “surge” there are nowhere near enough American soldiers in Iraq to make anything like a proper counterinsurgency strategy viable. Nor are there enough such soldiers anywhere in the US military. And on the list of things not worth doing unless you’re able to do them right, fighting wars ranks pretty high.